May 26, 2015 • 46 mins
Junk food is literally that, empty calories of energy that provide little nutritional value and usually are stored as fat. Yet junk food is irresistible and for good reason - companies spend tens of millions engineering it to be that way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know Frondhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
clark Wood, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So it's
stuff you should know and Chuck, Yes, we have done
(00:24):
some stuff before that relates to this episode. Okay, is
high food toast coincer are bad for you? That's right.
How McDonald's works, yea, how twinkies work? Yeah? Uh, well
that's it. I bet there's more. Probably I can't think
of it right now. Our zoos good or bad for animals?
Does your grandfather's diet affect you? Yeah? True that you know,
(00:47):
you know they drunk food mite and well yeah, so
you the future grandfather listening today, you're screwing up your
grandkids health right now, that's right. Go listen to our
epigenet accept Junk food is uh ubiquitous now and it
wasn't in my grandparents day. No, you know, no, they
had lame, lame diets. Yeah, of whole foods, these natural things. Well,
(01:12):
that's something that this article I thought was smart to
point out that back in the day before junk food,
it didn't mean everybody was just eating like hippies or
something like that, Like they were just these wonderful, like
wholesome spreads at every meal or something like that. They
like crowd or they ate the same thing, or there
are plenty of times where they were like I would
kill you for a tomato right now in the day
(01:35):
of winter. Um, I'm tired of eating this forty steak
covered in gravy exactly every night. Um. But they did
not have access to mass produced, um, really fundamentally unhealthy
food like we do today. And that's the definition of
(01:55):
junk food. Really, that's right. Junk food. You might have
heard of, like empty calories. Um, that's what junk food is.
It's food that has either zero or very little nutritional
value but has a lot of calories. But has a
ton of calories, usually in the form of carbs, which
um is usually a shot of way more energy than
(02:16):
you need. That doughnuts stick, it's tasty. What's a donut stick? Oh,
there's donut sticks, just like it's exactly what it sounds like. No,
it's a little debby device. Ohh yeah, I know this. Okay,
So it's a shot of energy device. Very rarely do
you need like a shot of energy like that, especially
(02:38):
when you're going to sit down in front of your
computer for three hours straight. They don't need that. So
what happens to that energy is it gets translated into
fat stored is fat and just as bad, you don't
get any nutritional value from it whatsoever. It doesn't contain
dietary fiber usually you know, it doesn't have any of
(03:00):
the minerals or vitamins that your body needs to like
mount immune response. And even worse, as we'll talk about later,
it's entirely possible that it's contributing to things like um
uh mental ill health in you ye, mental health, physical health.
Because we're talking packaged sweet goods, talking soft drinks, uh,
(03:26):
baked goods, salty stuff, man stuff loaded with that, all
the good things, all the good things. Right Like when
we were researching this, UM, I was like, I want
a doughnut right now. I'm gonna go get a donut.
Maybe I'll get like a griddle or something too. Like
I just wanted everything. I even thought like maybe I'll
get a root beer somewhere. I don't even know where
(03:48):
to get a root beer, but I was gonna try
and find one. You get any other soda and I well,
I I guess you probably could. That's what I was
going on. But I'm just saying I don't have personal
experience buying root beer anywhere. I gotta That's what this
article did to me, you know what I mean. I
got a guy can get you from up here good stuff. Yeah,
you just stick with me afterwards. All right, I'll introduce you. Thanks. Man,
you gotta meet him first, but yeah, after that, it's
(04:10):
all good. Um yeah, it's bad stuff. UM. So let's
talk about junk food. Let's talk about the history. I
guess because it's um it's pretty interesting and the like
we were saying before, before the dawn of the nineteenth century, UM,
people ate food mostly from stuff that they grew or harvested.
(04:31):
It wasn't processed that much. And big changes came around
when the Industrial Revolution hit and all of a sudden
people could get cheap flower. That was the big turning point,
the big turning point four in your home. And the
story of junk food is essentially the story of the
industrialization of food. Like before we had food that was
(04:54):
bad for you, like caramels were introduced by the Arabs
probably about a thousand years ago, some somewhere around there. Um. Um,
chocolate has been around for a very long time. Cookies
the dude who founded Keebler, Mr Keebler, he had a
bakery in the early nineteenth century. Like, people were making
stuff that wasn't good for you, but they were making it,
(05:16):
and it was a pain in the neck to make it,
so they weren't making it all of the time. You
couldn't just go anywhere and get it. And that is
inherently the problem with junk food today is it's everywhere,
and it's cheap and it's easy to get. Yeah, and
there were, uh, there were a lot of other factors
that contributed to the rise of junk food. Um, besides
(05:37):
the industrialization. People moved to cities and away from farms.
And if you're living in the middle of New York
City and you're not gonna have a big farm, let
us farm in your backyard. So long can let us
that you can the winter before? Right? Uh civil war?
(05:58):
That's what I know about canny. Uh. Well, we used
to can when I was a kid. I think I
told that story. Yeah, my mom used to take me
to the Canary and can stuff canary for like really, Yeah,
where was the cannary. It was the Cab County Cannary
over like a memorial drive. So it's just like the
facilities you needed to can your own stuff. That's pretty neat.
(06:21):
And you could show up with your green beans and
your peaches and you could can that stuff. Yeah. I've
never can, but I do eat a lot of can
stuff because pickled things are very very good for you. Yeah,
and things in the can aren't necessarily terrible for you. No. No.
And when you're saying can, like cans were not involved
at all, I'm guessing like glass jars were that. We
(06:41):
can't silver cans. Oh wow, yeah, man, that is serious stuff. Yeah,
it was pretty cool. You're like a Steinbeck family or something.
I just remember it was awful as a kid. Now
I would totally get into it, but back then it
was the most boring place on earth for a kid
to be wrong. Tire store is the most boring place
on earth for a kid to be wrong. Fabric store,
(07:02):
I will say, fabric store is definitely up there, I
have to say. Man, and I tweeted about this. You
me and I went to the fabric store the other
day and I was looking around, like, what are some
of you people doing in here. There were a lot
of the fabrics people, a lot of people I would
not have expected are into sewing, and like, I'm like, okay, everybody,
(07:25):
so like the entire spectrum of humanity was represented in
this fabric store. Well, that doesn't mean they so necessarily
know they were searching for fabrics and like looking at
them and comparing them to other fabrics they alsold. Well,
but that does it. Just because you buy fabric doesn't
mean you sow. They could upholster. Okay, that's to me
(07:45):
falls under sewing. It is one of the industrial arts
on its own, true, but I think of upholstery is
sewing to an extent, even though there's no sewing involved necessarily.
And these people better not have been upholstering anything with
their pink valor leopard fabric that they bought. Yeah, the
fabric stores are pretty amazing when you go in, like
the stuff that you can tell has been sitting on
(08:07):
the shelf since Yeah. Yeah, my mom used to take
me to the fabric store, so I have needed it.
I didn't like it either, but it wasn't like a
tire store to me, like getting tires put on your car. Yeah,
because Not only is there nothing for you to do
as a kid except to like run your hand over
the little quickly things on the new tire. The smell
(08:27):
in there just made it. It's just even worse. And
unless you're into reading like Car and Driver magazine, than
you're out of luck drinking bad coffee. That's where you
started drinking coffee when you're like, hey, just to kill
the boredom. So waiter, we agreed that the tire store
is the worst of all. Really for me, it was
a fabric store. But I'm sure I have bad memories
(08:49):
of the tire store in the Canary. Oh man, that
was a good one. It was about seven seven minutes
sometimes side trackage all right back to the ark in
Civil War. Um, another reason that fast food and junk
food became, and those are two different things we should
point out. Um, fast food isn't always junk food. No,
(09:10):
anybody who's been to Chipotle can tell you that. Yeah,
I went yesterday. They're trying to do it right, great stuff,
you know, Um, which they're not McDonald's associated anymore, you
know that, right. No, I don't understand why McDonald's divested
because the stock went through the roof if I'm not mistaken,
Chipotle was like, uh wanted the separation. I would guess
(09:32):
McDonald's would be like ts, we own like tons of
shares of you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how that
went down, so weird. It's probably a good thing though,
Yeah for Chipotle, you know, and McDonald's in big trouble. Ah. Yeah,
I will be very surprised if there's not McDonald's fifty
years from now. No, no, no, I don't think that.
But they just had their big quarterly pow wow, and
(09:54):
they're they're all pretty scared. No, no, I know, like
they're right now. Their money is a way down their profits.
It's our way now because like five Guys and all
these other burger chains definitely eating into their market share.
The problem is is McDonald's is trying is chasing after
everything right now rather than this is what we do.
This is why people come to McDonald's. Yeah, I don't
(10:15):
want to go to If I go to McDonald's is
because I'm hungover and I want a quarter poundary. I
don't want to mcfresh wrap, right, and it's you don't
even want something at the level of five guys like
you want down in Rudy McDonald's familiar tastes, and the
sooner McDonald's realizes that that's what people want from McDonald's
(10:35):
and just says, here you go, if you want to
come get it. Um, fantastic. Have you seen the Artist
and girl chicken? That's what I'm saying, Like, what is that?
That's not okay, that's not McDonald's. Well, plus they're What
is disturbing about it is you'll see the commercial saying
now it's a better quality chicken, blah blah blah, and
it's it's basically admitting like, look like mutants, like what
(10:58):
were you giving us before? Or still? Yeah? And the
other menu Yeah, American Civil War, I forgot where there again.
In the Civil War, troops started eating rations for the
first time, little easy to eat canned process garbage basically,
(11:18):
and they were like this is really good. Yeah. They
got hooked on it, and when they came back, they
wanted the same familiar taste and um, that's sort of
how fast food grew. Food vendors started, you know, parking
their carts outside of factories and stuff, and that that
was sort of like the first fast food chain. Well
not just that, that's where diners came from those food
(11:40):
carts that were parked outside for people coming off of
like the night shift or whatever, when all the restaurants
were closed. Um, they eventually took the wheels off and
added like seating inside, and that's where the diners originally
came from. And of course that all came about because
of the suburban sprawl and the birth of the automobile. Right, Um,
(12:01):
let's talk about a few of these. Uh. You found
this great article on what was it called New York Times. Yeah,
but what was the article called, I don't remember what
it was called. Let us now praise the great men
of junk food. Yes, that was It was a great one.
And so they listed some of the early some of
the first junk food in the United States, and the
(12:23):
first snaky junk food they credit as being cracker Jack's um,
introduced at the World's Fair in Ee by the brothers
Frederick and Louis or Lewis uh Rukheim m hm. And
you know, cracker Jacks is delicious, is still around today, right,
And and the thing with cracker Jacks is, again, there
(12:45):
was recipes like that in existence prior to cracker Jack's, Right,
same with Caramel's name with chocolate. People made this stuff.
But what the Rockheim brothers did was they took it.
They figured out a way to produce it on a
larger scale, sell it, and and this is one of
the hallmarks of junk food. They figured out a way
to market it effectively. That little prize, that's exactly right.
(13:08):
That basically established the rule book for junk food from
then till now. Yeah, the Tutsi roll is another good example.
In five Um, there was candy before that, but this
is the first one to be individually wrapped. You know,
that didn't come in a packet of six or eight.
So you could take a penny, a little shiny copper penny,
(13:31):
and you could get a Tutsi roll and you didn't
have to like pick the hair off of it first
because it was wrapped individually. That's right. Uh. I like
this story. UM. An eleven year old named Frank Epperson
UM left on a cold night in San Francisco, left
his powdered soda drink with a stirring stick in the cup.
Came out the next day and it was frozen, and
(13:53):
he ate it. He said, this is amazing. I'm gonna
wait twenty years and then patting this. Yeah, and not
quite twenty years. About eighteen years later, he basically applied
for a patent and called them, uh, epsicles because everybody's
like and this. Children said, hey, pop, why don't you
call him popsicles? And so the popsicle was born. Yeah,
(14:16):
and his children never saw a penny of that money
another junk food, did they not? I'm just okay, what
about do you know much about potato chips? Uh? Now,
So we could sit here for hours and hours and
do this, because every junk food has a great origin story.
There's a there's a book that did this for est.
It's called The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food,
(14:37):
and it's on Academia dot E d U, which is
basically apparently they upload books onto this thing and you
can read them. Yeah. So, um, potato chips. The legend
goes that it was invented in the eighteen fifties in Saratoga,
New York by a guy, a chef named George Crew
I believe, and um, that's not true. They've been around
(15:00):
for at least thirty years before that, but that's the
popular story. And Um, around the eighteen fifties, eighteen seventies
eighteen eighties, people started manufacturing him on mass, but they
were delivered in barrels, and then the customers would come
and be like, I brought my own brown paper bag,
shovel some potato chips into this, and I'll go home
(15:23):
and warm them up, and they'll be stale. And so
they part of the mass commercialization of this junk food
was to figure out how to package it and preserve
it so that they didn't go stale and people didn't
have to bring their own bag from home to go
buy potato chips. They could just buy the bag and
take it home. And it took until the nineteen thirties
to figure that out. How long was that the eighties
(15:45):
and really started to sell them. It took like fifty
years to get him package correctly. Interesting uh, soda soda drinks,
soft drink, soda, pop pop coke. Depending on where you're from,
you're gonna call it something different. Uh. That goes back
to seventeenth century Europe when they had carbonated water mixed
with lemon juice and honey and um. Many years later,
(16:08):
in nineteen seventy six, seven eleven introduced the world to
the Big Gulp, which was thirty two ounces of um
of nasty stuff, and then they said, how about doubling
down on that, and they created the double Big Gulp,
And then Mayor Bloomberg was like, no, no, I think
(16:31):
I got rid of those, didn't they think they tried to? Yeah,
they definitely tried to. I don't know if I went
through or not. In New York City, Yeah, Emily still
drinks the diet Coke Big Gulp every day, and I'm
just like, you just can't do that to yourself. Yeah,
there's there's got to be something really really wrong with it.
There has to be. This is too too much science,
(16:52):
like in one concentrated form, you know. Yeah, but what's
funny is Coke, PETSI Hires, roop Here dr Upper. They
all started out as a lick sers and tonics that
were sold at the pharmacy, like that's where you got
those originally, and then they became one of the most ubiquitous,
unhealthy drinks on the planet. Alright, So we talked a
(17:14):
lot about we could, like you said, we could go
on all day talking about the history of different junks.
Would you got one more? I got one more? The
world's first combination candy bar. There were chocolate bar bars
before the first candy bar, Clark Bar really, which is uh,
it's like a butterfinger but better is it? Because it
was first and it's a Clark You got any more?
(17:38):
I've got more, but I'll stop. Pop tarts used to
be called the fruit scone. They used to be called
ep tarts and oh, I've got this is this is
very important, actually chucking all right, this is possibly the
mind blower the podcast. And this is a mind blowing
episode so far. Oreos was the knockoff, Hydros was the original.
(18:00):
Away Why how did they get market share? Oreo? Yeah?
Just by tasting way way better, I guess. Interesting, yea,
So Hidrocks is like made fun of it, like I
got hide Drocks when I was a kid because they're
a little cheaper, I think, you know, But they were
the original ones in hershey or Oreos was the rival,
the competitor knockoff of hide Rocks. I wish I would
(18:21):
have done that, although I'm not sure it would have
worked in elementary school if people like you can't afford
Oreos and like this was the original. It's disgusting, but
it's the It came first, and I can't even get
the cookie apart without it breaking like the oreo. Poor kid.
All right, so after this break, we're gonna come back
and talk a little bit about the science of junk food.
(18:58):
Google Cluster first. Munition Candy pop Tarts are the knockoff.
They were originally created to overcome the rival country Square Stop.
I love how you said it quieter, like maybe Chuck
won't notice sitting right across from me, just between you
and listening. Although the bubble gum one was pretty cool.
(19:19):
The guy, yeah, he invented gun before bubble gum was
just chewing gum. Double bubble is what he came up with, right, Uh,
it was a double bubble, was the first one, I think.
So it was in that one New York Times article. Yes,
it was double bubble. And he said that he died
with a smile on his face because he brought so
much joy to children all over the world. You didn't
(19:39):
care about their gentle habits. Alright, So the science of
junk food, Um, it's actually pretty interesting because it's not
just there's nothing willy nilly about it. These are very
there's a lot of money at steak, so companies throw
a lot of dough into food laboratories, um, finding what
(20:01):
they refer to as that sweet spot or the bliss point. Yeah,
the bliss point. Um. Again, the article is really great
for New York Times. That was a different one. That
one is called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.
It's very long, um, but that bliss point or the
sweet spot is what they're after. And what you're really
(20:22):
talking about is mouth feel, which we've talked about in
Nothing Taste or Know something else more recently than that.
I think I had to do with bars. Remember gum
Arabic gave a different mouth feel, um to than just
regular simple syrup. Yeah, that's right, mouth feel. So Cheetos
is one of the more famous junk foods of all
time because it's sort of a wonder of science in
(20:45):
that um it praise upon something called vanishing caloric density,
which basically means you put a cheeto or a cheese
puff or a cheese poodle in your mouth and you're
gonna chew it a couple of times and it's just
gonna sort of dis aolve and your brain doesn't really
register that it's even eating calories. That is why you
(21:06):
eat an entire bag of Cheetos because we've evolved to
see with our tongues, or to measure with our tongues. Um,
roughly the caloric density of a food. Yeah, because when
took Tucks running around, they needed to eat efficiently, which
means eating as many calories as they could with his
little stuff going in their mouth as possible. Exactly right. So, um,
(21:29):
the tongue would learn to detect fat. Fat is extremely
dense calorically, So after you eat a certain amount of fat,
you get kind of this nasty feel in your mouth.
Your mouth feel it's kind of greasy, right, and you
suddenly realize that you can't eat another bite of this
fatty slab of pork fat. You know, yeah, it is good,
(21:52):
but imagine eating a big toilet seat size slab over
you would not write. You get sick from it, and
the reason why is your brain becomes satiated. So what
these food scientists figured out is that they if they
can make something basically melt like a cheeto, it tricks
your tongue into missing the fact that it's a really
(22:15):
fatty food, and like you said, you can eat a
whole bag of it thanks to that vanishing caloric density. Well,
another thing they do is like, let's say you're eating
a cheeseburger from a fast food chain and that has
that same fatty feel, but they realize if you serve
the the soda with that, it balances things out to
(22:37):
where you don't have that greasy mouth feel any longer exactly.
So that's I mean, that's one reason why they sell
SODA's fast food chains. That's what a value meal comes from.
It's not just like, yeah, we want to make we
want to make sure you get your money's worth. No,
they want to make sure that you're gonna say I
could use another cheeseburger. I'm back, I want another cheeseburger please,
(22:59):
And I say, certainly, we will happily sell you one
of those. See, I don't drink soda, So when I
eat fast food, what do you drink water? Huh? Is
that strange? Yeah? Like what else would I drink? Off?
Notn soda? Well that's that's it. Oh yeah, that's your choice,
soda or nothing. You're not even allowed to drink water.
(23:21):
You have to sit there and eat it dry well.
Although my sister in law drinks milk with most meals.
I grew up like that. Like milk and pizza even, Yeah,
milk and everything. Yeah, not me. I've got a really
disgusting milk and broccoli story that I'm not going to tell,
but it is rody. Come on, you really want to
(23:43):
hear it? Okay? Well, then warning for those of you
with a weak stomach, you really don't want to hear this.
Or if you're I would say eating broccoli or drinking
milk anytime soon, probably avoid it. Okay. So um, I
hate broccoli, but I used to really hate broccoli. And
when I was a kid, like you just couldn't leave
the table until you were done eating your vegetables, and
(24:05):
we drank milk with every every meal. So I would
I would eat the broccoli where I would take a
bite and it would touch my tongue for a mill
a second, and I'd wash it down with like half
a thing of milk. Right, So you're basically swallowing broccoli, hoole, Right,
but I'm taking like a half a cup of milk
for each swallow. So I kept having to drink more
and more milk, I think. Well, one night, my mom
(24:28):
was working a shift at the er and my dad
was in charge of feeding me dinner. And um, I'd
gotten about halfway through my broccoli and then drank god
knows how much milk with it. When I took one
more bite, and all of it just came right back
up on my plate and without looking my dad was
like looking up at the ceiling while he grabbed my plate.
(24:48):
I was like, okay, I think that's enough for you,
and like cleared the plate, and I thought I won.
So your dad cleared a plate of vomited up food
without knowing it, No, without like purposely not looking at Oh, okay,
He's like, okay, that's enough. Well, that was nice of him.
It was I didn't have to finish my brother. I
thought he was gonna say, like, eat it again, right,
he rubbed my face in it. My mom used to
(25:10):
said the old oven timer, remember that trick. Oh, we
didn't have time. It was just you're not getting up.
It doesn't matter what time it is. You can't get
up and go get bed or watch TV or anything.
We had. Like he got ten minutes to finish those
screen beans, and I did the old drink. I was like,
I'm drawing just corner the bathroom, right. It didn't work. Now,
(25:31):
I thought it was smart all right, So drunk food
is not healthy for you. Oh yeah, we know that, Um,
the American Civil War. Here are things that can happen
if you eat too much junk food. You're going to
get obese, which means you're gonna have an increased risk
of heart disease. You may get type two diabetes, and
(25:52):
like you said, with the mental side, you may become depressed.
Because addiction. UM, it has all the characteristics of just
like a drug addiction and alcoho all addiction. You bene
on it, you withdraw from it, you um get an
increased tolerance from it. And UM, I I have the
impression that they have figured out like that there really
(26:14):
is a certain amount of addiction you can you can
get from eating junk food, and that it's basically getting
that pop, that that blood sugar high rush that you're
dropped off from very quickly and then having to chase
after it again, chasing, chasing the dragon or something like that.
So I guess that's what it's called. UM. And so
(26:36):
you can display them the signs of addiction from junk
food as well. UM. Much more closely linked is the
connection between junk food and type two diabetes. Yeah, Americans
UM consume about twenty two teaspoons of sugar a day
(26:57):
on average. UM. A lot of this stuff comes from
high pric doose, corn sert um, candy, junk food, soft drinks,
and UM. How that works, as your body is going
to break that down, uh, break down those carbohydrates, and
your blood sugar is gonna spike. UM. Which you know,
a single episode of your blood sugar spiking isn't the
(27:18):
biggest deal in the world. But when you repeatedly do
that to your pancreas, UM, it's gonna basically tire out
and wear out those insulin producing cells and trigger type
two diabetes. Right. Because when you when you have glucose
in your blood, that's a good thing because that provides
(27:38):
energy to yourself and insulin comes along and helps open
up your cells to allow it to absorb the glucose
and get it out of your blood stream. Right. But
after being exposed to this time and time again, your
cells stop absorbing glucose as well, so you have to
produce more and more insulin, and eventually, like you were saying,
those cells tire out, your pancreas can't produce enough insulin,
(28:00):
and so you always have an elevated level of glucose
in your blood streak. That's bad. That leads to nerve
damage and blood vessel damage which is associated with type
two diabetes, and everything from heart disease to foot amputations
can result. Because, like say, with your foot, this always
fascinated me. I was like, why would diabetes lead to
(28:20):
your foot getting amputated? I'll tell you why. So, remember,
glucose levels leading to nerve damage supposedly concentrates in the
foot and you lose feeling in your foot. So even
just like stubbing your toe badly can lead to an
infection that you don't notice because you're not feeling the pain.
And all of a sudden you have this uh infection
(28:43):
that's not being fought off properly because the blood circulation
to your foot is diminished. And next thing you know,
you have gang green and your foot has to be
amputated because of type two diabetes. Yeah, and isn't um
I didn't look this up. But the way I understand
it is you can reverse the head towards type two
diabetes until you have type two diabetes, and then you've
(29:04):
got it. That's what I think, That's what I thought
to you, like, you can't undo it once it's take
and hold right. What you what you go through first
is called insulin resistance metabolic syndrome or pre diabetes, and
you can catch that. You just need to go in
for a physical like once a year or something like that,
and you'll be able to catch whether or not you
have pre diabetes, and then you take certain measures to
(29:28):
not get type two diabetes. But yeah, I think once
you have type two diabetes, you got it for life. Um.
One other thing I want to say, uh, and it's
not just about the health aspects of it, but there's
this really great documentary narrated by Katie Curic called fed
Up I think everybody should see and it's about this
really good, really well done documentary. Yeah. There there's a
(29:51):
lot of great food documentaries out right now, Um that
really go into what the food industry has become these days.
Very eye opening stuff. Yeah. Have you seen Supersize Me? Yeah,
you know he's under fire for basically like a lot
of people have tried to replicate his results and if
no one's been able to do it. Huh, it was
(30:12):
interesting at the time. Have you seen super High Me? Uh? Yes, Benson, Yeah,
it was funny. That was For those who don't know,
Doug Benson is a comedian who was famous for smoking
tons of weed. And he's got a documentary called Super
High Me Yeah, in which I believe he smoked pot
(30:35):
every day, all day for thirty days and then died
and took a bunch of tests like brain tests and
physicals and things like that, and then did not smoke
at all, and then compared the two. How did it
turn out? That was interesting? Some results were as you'd expect,
in some surprise to see that he's a funny guy
that I like him. Um, all right, so we'll take
(30:58):
a break here and we come back. We're gonna to
talk a little bit more about this really cool article,
the Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. All Right, you
(31:22):
sent me this article that we reference, the Extraordinary Science
of Addictive Junk Food, and it's really interesting. UM by
Michael Moss. Right was that his name pretty sure? As
in the New York Times in two thousand twelve, or yeah,
And he basically details, Uh, at first, a meeting in
n of the heads of some of the largest food
(31:43):
companies in the world getting together, um to talk about
the fact that all these doctors are staying we're making
junk people are getting no beasts, and um this this
chemist basically thought, I'm going to talk these people into
sort of reverse seeing some of their their practices the
(32:04):
name of good health, and was disappointed to find that
they all kind of dug in and we're like no, Like,
we're gonna make this stuff and people want it. They
want it, and we're not going to try and make
a healthier snicker bar that doesn't sell because the name
of the game is selling food. I think the way
nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads. Yeah, the
(32:26):
thing is is a lot of people controvert that point
and say, you guys kind of use science to hijack
our evolutionary processes and make it so that it's really,
really difficult to refuse this food, right, like the cheetos
that melt in your mouth and your brain doesn't realize
it's eating all these calories. Uh, so you end up
(32:47):
eating tons of cheetos. Um one of the most interesting
stories in here, I thought, And he tells a bunch
of sort of histories of some of these junk foods,
but um, lunchables was super interesting to me and I
want to say nefarious almost, you know when you look
at how it came about. Um, But basically what they
(33:11):
did a lot of research into uh motherhood and found
that the biggest challenge was time and moms don't have time.
And I say, mom's parents, Well this is so it
was mom's Yeah that's true. Um, parents and moms don't
have time to get to get a good meal into
(33:34):
their child. So we're also having a bologney crisis, right.
Oscar Meyer was like, nobody's eating all of loaf any longer.
We're in a lot of trouble. So what are we
gonna do? Yeah, these things came together to create the Lunchable,
which was a new convenient way to package food in
a tray. But it was the same stuff. Yeah, sell
(33:55):
that ballogne. Yeah again, it's all marketing and packaging. So
that Bologny. They wanted to put bread in there, but
of course bread, you can't make bread lass for two months. Um,
So they threw some crackers in there. Uh, they wanted
cheese in there because what goes better with bologna and
crackers cheese? And then I think Oscar Meyer bought Kraft,
(34:16):
so they just started using craft cheese, and both of them.
By the way, we're owned by Philip Morris, a cigarette
manufacturer who definitely has your health at heart. Yeah. Uh.
They did experiment with some different cheeses and they found
that like, real cheese was no good. Uh. And the
best cheapest cheese that lasted the longest was not even cheese.
It was cheese food, which I think is awesome that
(34:37):
it's in its own category cheese food, cheese food. Yeah,
but hats off to him for trying real cheddar first. Yeah,
I guess. So it's like the potato chips and a barrel.
Though they go stale, you can't you can't sell it. Yeah.
This article points out that it takes several months for
something from to go from the factory to the grocery
(34:57):
store shelf. Yeah. So wait, that's the part I didn't get.
The ham in those things is good for several months. Yes, Oh,
it's probably good for several years. Preservatives the same thing
that the poison squad was like testing against. Remember in
the FDA episode. These are the things that didn't make
them sick. That's what preserves our food. Now, it's not
(35:19):
necessarily good for you, but it won't make you sick
immediately and Chuck, There's one other thing I want to say. Um,
I've seen this a couple of places. Apparently the apple
that you buy at the store has been off the
tree for an average of fourteen months. Really, yes, and
(35:40):
it's just the preservatives, Like, I have no idea how
they do it. Fourteen months is the average from tree
to shelf for an apple? An apple? That's what eve.
I don't know. Interesting, I don't know, but I have
(36:01):
seen it a couple of places, and I would like
to know if anyone out there knows that that is
incontrovertibly untrue, or if it is true, how that's possible.
I would love to know, all right, the big I'm
sure someone knows, because you make an excellent point, like
why would then it's spoil very quickly in your house
unless it's kept under certain conditions until it gets to
(36:24):
your house, and then it's like, well die because you
bought me. Uh So back the lunchables, the sales were
going gangbusters, but they were still losing money on it
because it was just an expensive product to package those
little trays and everything costs money. Um, and then they
(36:44):
just started to run wild with adding things to make
a two increased sales. They started adding desserts to it.
They started adding sugary drinks to them, um Pret's son
Yeah Kool Late Capris son um. And then they started marketing.
They tried things like carrots, but they didn't sell well,
so they scrapped it. Uh. And then they started realizing
(37:06):
that we should market to children and not moms anymore,
because what they figured out was that it was about
the kids having control, because the kids would go and
throw out the carrots and just eat the meat and cheese,
let's say, in the loresa cup that went in there. Uh.
And so they started marketing to children with commercials like
(37:26):
all day you gotta do what they say, but lunchtime
is all yours. And little kids on Saturday mornings are like,
lunchtime is all mine with lunchables and they wanted it,
so they would go to the store and scream at
the top of their lungs until they got it. The
other interesting thing was which which also one other thing
I guarantee you, and I haven't verified this, but I
(37:46):
guarantee you that if you go to the store and
you find lunchables, they're at a child's eye level. Oh,
I'm sure they are. That's where they're placed, not mom
I level, child eye level. Yeah. I think they're on
the um the horizontal part of the meat section. Yes,
like not built vertically up on a shelf as if
they're down even below the kid where they can even
(38:07):
grab it, yeah and run out of the store with me. Um.
The other interesting thing I think it was in this
article when they talked about what's happened to yogurt over
the years, was that in here we're basically they hijacked
something that should be good for you, and now you
get like twice the amount of sugar your body needs
and a serving of yogurt these days like heath bar sprinkles. Yeah. Yeah,
(38:30):
and now let's put it. Let's put it in its
squeezy tube for kids. Can call it yogurt, call it yogurt. Yeah. Um.
This article was really great. I mean, this guy really
laid it out. Um, just the ideas behind it, the
thinking behind it, the science behind It's a really long article.
It's really really worth reading. Um. One of the other
things he goes into is that there's this um uh,
(38:53):
this food scientist who's kind of like a legend. I
think his last name is Moscow Wits. Yeah. Um, he's
just a legend in this field. And he figured out
very early on that the optimizer. Yeah, he figured out
that UMP not only does your tongue like detect fat
and say, okay, you've had enough fat, stop eating this,
(39:13):
that that has to be tricked. It does the same
thing with flavor too. So um, if there's a really
overt and obvious flavor that might taste delicious, you get
sick of it faster. So what this guy figured out
what food scientists now do is they'll take flavors and
combine other flavors so one isn't dominant, so that there's
(39:35):
no real flavor for the tongue to be like, I'm
sick of it. So doritos are a really good example,
Like nacho dorritos is its own flavor. It's not just garlic,
it's not just cheesy. It's this thing that they've put
together that tricks your tongue into never being satiated, which
is how you can down a whole bag of doritos. Yeah,
it was so interesting, and so much research goes into this.
(39:57):
When they start talking about the amount of consue, more
study they did and and uh, like thousands and thousands
of hours of people tasting things, uh and taking notes
on what they're tasting, and basically creating a mathematical formula
for how to create the perfect thing that you won't
want to stop eating, and not just for people for
(40:20):
this age group or this age group of this ethnicity
or whatever. Like, it's really down to science all of
this just to come up with cherry vanilla dr pepper. Yeah. Uh.
And the other thing too was remember how I railed
about all the doritos now the different flavors, which I
have no problem with that. Well, I just thought it
was interesting and that they basically food technicians at a
(40:42):
certain point stopped worrying about new products and said, the
line extension is where it's at. So instead of uh,
one type of dorito, will offer you like twenty five
different types rather than one type of dorito and like
an entirely new product, because apparently one of the hardest
things in the world to do is to get people
(41:03):
to buy a new product. Whereas if you already have
the branding associated with it, the emotional attachment, people know
it's tasty, they'll try a different version and offshoot of it,
but not necessarily a whole new product that could be
superior in every way. Uh. And they spend as much
as thirty million dollars a year on some of these products,
(41:23):
not the company, but like on a specific food product,
including things like machinery forty dollar machine that simulated a
chewing mouth to test the perfect breakpoint of a potato chip. Yeah,
which is four pounds per square inch. I think have
four pounds of pressure per square inch. And so they're
not only spending money on research on advertising as well
(41:45):
as how stuff works. Article pointed out that um, in
two thowelve, just McDonald's spent two points seven times as
much money on advertising as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water,
and milk producers can buy. Yeah, I believe that totally.
You don't see a lot of broccoli commercials. They're disgusting.
(42:08):
All right, we'll finish with something interesting that you sent
about the junk food diet. I think I've heard of
this before, um, where someone will undertake a diet of
not only junk food, but a lot of junk food. Oh,
this guy's a nutritionist, like a nutrition scientist from Kansas State.
Go some sort of cat Yeah, like a large cat
(42:34):
case state. Yeah, it's some sort of big cat there.
You all right, go big cats? Uh. Yeah. He went
on a ten week junk food diet, um chocolate covered snacks,
cream filled cakes, sugary cereals, cookies, chips. He did eat
a protein shake every day, and some vitamins and supplements
and some veggies here and there too, And he lost
(42:56):
a lot of weight doing it because he calories a day,
which is a calorie reduced diet. But technically, as far
as macronutrients goes uh, it was a balanced diet, balance
between carbs, proteins, and fats. And he lost a bunch
of weight. He lost a bunch of weight. He lost
his b m I went down, his total body fat
(43:19):
was reduced, his cholesterol was reduced, the bad cholesterol went down,
the good cholesterol went up. And that nuts eating junk
food on a junk food diet. Like I can see
losing weight like calories or calories, And there's a big
debate about that, but I think ultimately that's what this
thing shows. And if you reduce calories, it doesn't matter
where your calories are coming from, you're going to lose weight.
(43:41):
But to have your bad cholestero all go down and
you're good. Cluster all go up. Was really surprising to me. Yeah,
and I think the main thing I took away though,
this is a ten week diet and what happens over
a ten year period, Well that yeah, who knows. That
was a great question, pretty interesting though, very interesting stuff.
Mark stab, I believe Mark Hobb of K State go
(44:05):
big cats man. Sorry, K State. That was Lane Chuck.
That was lame. Uh. If you want to know more
about junk food, you should type those words in the
search part how stuff works dot com and check out,
um the New York Times articles. There's some good ones
on there. Check out the Encyclopedia Junk Food and Fast Food.
(44:25):
Actually go to the podcast page for this episode, and
it's got all that stuff. Uh. And I guess it's
time for listening there. Uh. Yeah. By the way, I
just looked it up. I don't normally do that. But
it's wildcats, so we were right. Bam, Willie the wildcat
is the actual man. We said big cats, and it's
the wildcat. Wildcats are not super big, but they can
(44:45):
be yeah, like allions. Technically a wildcat. Oh, I guess
I just think of like bobcats and things in mountain
lines when I think the wildcats, but the line would
be a wildcat right, Sure, they're huge, huge, All right,
I'm gonna call this aborigines. Um. Remember when the Male
Puberty episode we talked about, Um, the Aborigines had some
(45:07):
pretty brutal puberty rights that they would put boys through. Um,
we were taking a task a little bit in a
nice way. Um, guys, want to give you some feedback
about the term in the Australian context. Uh, this is
quite an outdated term to say aborigines. Some people still
identify with it, but it's generally accepted to say Indigenous
Australians are Aboriginal Australians. Uh. There are hundreds of Aboriginal
(45:31):
nations around Australia, each with their own traditions and knowledge.
Within these nations our various clan and family groups, and
within those are multiple types of kinship relationships. It gets
really complicated. So that puberty ritual you mentioned would likely
have only been practiced by some people. Others would have
had their own traditions. So in other words, we shouldn't
have just said, like, the Aborigines do this, because it
(45:54):
might have been like one small part of a tribe
or something very very good point. Yeah, so that is
from Krista Uh, I assume in Australia. Can you say
it like in Australian. Yeah, that's pretty good, all right
Australian for Krista. Um if you want to take us
to task in a nice way or otherwise, but we
always prefer it a nice way. Um, we'd love to
(46:16):
hear from you. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
(46:38):
how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know Frondhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
clark Wood, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So it's
stuff you should know and Chuck, Yes, we have done
(00:24):
some stuff before that relates to this episode. Okay, is
high food toast coincer are bad for you? That's right.
How McDonald's works, yea, how twinkies work? Yeah? Uh, well
that's it. I bet there's more. Probably I can't think
of it right now. Our zoos good or bad for animals?
Does your grandfather's diet affect you? Yeah? True that you know,
(00:47):
you know they drunk food mite and well yeah, so
you the future grandfather listening today, you're screwing up your
grandkids health right now, that's right. Go listen to our
epigenet accept Junk food is uh ubiquitous now and it
wasn't in my grandparents day. No, you know, no, they
had lame, lame diets. Yeah, of whole foods, these natural things. Well,
(01:12):
that's something that this article I thought was smart to
point out that back in the day before junk food,
it didn't mean everybody was just eating like hippies or
something like that, Like they were just these wonderful, like
wholesome spreads at every meal or something like that. They
like crowd or they ate the same thing, or there
are plenty of times where they were like I would
kill you for a tomato right now in the day
(01:35):
of winter. Um, I'm tired of eating this forty steak
covered in gravy exactly every night. Um. But they did
not have access to mass produced, um, really fundamentally unhealthy
food like we do today. And that's the definition of
(01:55):
junk food. Really, that's right. Junk food. You might have
heard of, like empty calories. Um, that's what junk food is.
It's food that has either zero or very little nutritional
value but has a lot of calories. But has a
ton of calories, usually in the form of carbs, which
um is usually a shot of way more energy than
(02:16):
you need. That doughnuts stick, it's tasty. What's a donut stick? Oh,
there's donut sticks, just like it's exactly what it sounds like. No,
it's a little debby device. Ohh yeah, I know this. Okay,
So it's a shot of energy device. Very rarely do
you need like a shot of energy like that, especially
(02:38):
when you're going to sit down in front of your
computer for three hours straight. They don't need that. So
what happens to that energy is it gets translated into
fat stored is fat and just as bad, you don't
get any nutritional value from it whatsoever. It doesn't contain
dietary fiber usually you know, it doesn't have any of
(03:00):
the minerals or vitamins that your body needs to like
mount immune response. And even worse, as we'll talk about later,
it's entirely possible that it's contributing to things like um
uh mental ill health in you ye, mental health, physical health.
Because we're talking packaged sweet goods, talking soft drinks, uh,
(03:26):
baked goods, salty stuff, man stuff loaded with that, all
the good things, all the good things. Right Like when
we were researching this, UM, I was like, I want
a doughnut right now. I'm gonna go get a donut.
Maybe I'll get like a griddle or something too. Like
I just wanted everything. I even thought like maybe I'll
get a root beer somewhere. I don't even know where
(03:48):
to get a root beer, but I was gonna try
and find one. You get any other soda and I well,
I I guess you probably could. That's what I was
going on. But I'm just saying I don't have personal
experience buying root beer anywhere. I gotta That's what this
article did to me, you know what I mean. I
got a guy can get you from up here good stuff. Yeah,
you just stick with me afterwards. All right, I'll introduce you. Thanks. Man,
you gotta meet him first, but yeah, after that, it's
(04:10):
all good. Um yeah, it's bad stuff. UM. So let's
talk about junk food. Let's talk about the history. I
guess because it's um it's pretty interesting and the like
we were saying before, before the dawn of the nineteenth century, UM,
people ate food mostly from stuff that they grew or harvested.
(04:31):
It wasn't processed that much. And big changes came around
when the Industrial Revolution hit and all of a sudden
people could get cheap flower. That was the big turning point,
the big turning point four in your home. And the
story of junk food is essentially the story of the
industrialization of food. Like before we had food that was
(04:54):
bad for you, like caramels were introduced by the Arabs
probably about a thousand years ago, some somewhere around there. Um. Um,
chocolate has been around for a very long time. Cookies
the dude who founded Keebler, Mr Keebler, he had a
bakery in the early nineteenth century. Like, people were making
stuff that wasn't good for you, but they were making it,
(05:16):
and it was a pain in the neck to make it,
so they weren't making it all of the time. You
couldn't just go anywhere and get it. And that is
inherently the problem with junk food today is it's everywhere,
and it's cheap and it's easy to get. Yeah, and
there were, uh, there were a lot of other factors
that contributed to the rise of junk food. Um, besides
(05:37):
the industrialization. People moved to cities and away from farms.
And if you're living in the middle of New York
City and you're not gonna have a big farm, let
us farm in your backyard. So long can let us
that you can the winter before? Right? Uh civil war?
(05:58):
That's what I know about canny. Uh. Well, we used
to can when I was a kid. I think I
told that story. Yeah, my mom used to take me
to the Canary and can stuff canary for like really, Yeah,
where was the cannary. It was the Cab County Cannary
over like a memorial drive. So it's just like the
facilities you needed to can your own stuff. That's pretty neat.
(06:21):
And you could show up with your green beans and
your peaches and you could can that stuff. Yeah. I've
never can, but I do eat a lot of can
stuff because pickled things are very very good for you. Yeah,
and things in the can aren't necessarily terrible for you. No. No.
And when you're saying can, like cans were not involved
at all, I'm guessing like glass jars were that. We
(06:41):
can't silver cans. Oh wow, yeah, man, that is serious stuff. Yeah,
it was pretty cool. You're like a Steinbeck family or something.
I just remember it was awful as a kid. Now
I would totally get into it, but back then it
was the most boring place on earth for a kid
to be wrong. Tire store is the most boring place
on earth for a kid to be wrong. Fabric store,
(07:02):
I will say, fabric store is definitely up there, I
have to say. Man, and I tweeted about this. You
me and I went to the fabric store the other
day and I was looking around, like, what are some
of you people doing in here. There were a lot
of the fabrics people, a lot of people I would
not have expected are into sewing, and like, I'm like, okay, everybody,
(07:25):
so like the entire spectrum of humanity was represented in
this fabric store. Well, that doesn't mean they so necessarily
know they were searching for fabrics and like looking at
them and comparing them to other fabrics they alsold. Well,
but that does it. Just because you buy fabric doesn't
mean you sow. They could upholster. Okay, that's to me
(07:45):
falls under sewing. It is one of the industrial arts
on its own, true, but I think of upholstery is
sewing to an extent, even though there's no sewing involved necessarily.
And these people better not have been upholstering anything with
their pink valor leopard fabric that they bought. Yeah, the
fabric stores are pretty amazing when you go in, like
the stuff that you can tell has been sitting on
(08:07):
the shelf since Yeah. Yeah, my mom used to take
me to the fabric store, so I have needed it.
I didn't like it either, but it wasn't like a
tire store to me, like getting tires put on your car. Yeah,
because Not only is there nothing for you to do
as a kid except to like run your hand over
the little quickly things on the new tire. The smell
(08:27):
in there just made it. It's just even worse. And
unless you're into reading like Car and Driver magazine, than
you're out of luck drinking bad coffee. That's where you
started drinking coffee when you're like, hey, just to kill
the boredom. So waiter, we agreed that the tire store
is the worst of all. Really for me, it was
a fabric store. But I'm sure I have bad memories
(08:49):
of the tire store in the Canary. Oh man, that
was a good one. It was about seven seven minutes
sometimes side trackage all right back to the ark in
Civil War. Um, another reason that fast food and junk
food became, and those are two different things we should
point out. Um, fast food isn't always junk food. No,
(09:10):
anybody who's been to Chipotle can tell you that. Yeah,
I went yesterday. They're trying to do it right, great stuff,
you know, Um, which they're not McDonald's associated anymore, you
know that, right. No, I don't understand why McDonald's divested
because the stock went through the roof if I'm not mistaken,
Chipotle was like, uh wanted the separation. I would guess
(09:32):
McDonald's would be like ts, we own like tons of
shares of you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how that
went down, so weird. It's probably a good thing though,
Yeah for Chipotle, you know, and McDonald's in big trouble. Ah. Yeah,
I will be very surprised if there's not McDonald's fifty
years from now. No, no, no, I don't think that.
But they just had their big quarterly pow wow, and
(09:54):
they're they're all pretty scared. No, no, I know, like
they're right now. Their money is a way down their profits.
It's our way now because like five Guys and all
these other burger chains definitely eating into their market share.
The problem is is McDonald's is trying is chasing after
everything right now rather than this is what we do.
This is why people come to McDonald's. Yeah, I don't
(10:15):
want to go to If I go to McDonald's is
because I'm hungover and I want a quarter poundary. I
don't want to mcfresh wrap, right, and it's you don't
even want something at the level of five guys like
you want down in Rudy McDonald's familiar tastes, and the
sooner McDonald's realizes that that's what people want from McDonald's
(10:35):
and just says, here you go, if you want to
come get it. Um, fantastic. Have you seen the Artist
and girl chicken? That's what I'm saying, Like, what is that?
That's not okay, that's not McDonald's. Well, plus they're What
is disturbing about it is you'll see the commercial saying
now it's a better quality chicken, blah blah blah, and
it's it's basically admitting like, look like mutants, like what
(10:58):
were you giving us before? Or still? Yeah? And the
other menu Yeah, American Civil War, I forgot where there again.
In the Civil War, troops started eating rations for the
first time, little easy to eat canned process garbage basically,
(11:18):
and they were like this is really good. Yeah. They
got hooked on it, and when they came back, they
wanted the same familiar taste and um, that's sort of
how fast food grew. Food vendors started, you know, parking
their carts outside of factories and stuff, and that that
was sort of like the first fast food chain. Well
not just that, that's where diners came from those food
(11:40):
carts that were parked outside for people coming off of
like the night shift or whatever, when all the restaurants
were closed. Um, they eventually took the wheels off and
added like seating inside, and that's where the diners originally
came from. And of course that all came about because
of the suburban sprawl and the birth of the automobile. Right, Um,
(12:01):
let's talk about a few of these. Uh. You found
this great article on what was it called New York Times. Yeah,
but what was the article called, I don't remember what
it was called. Let us now praise the great men
of junk food. Yes, that was It was a great one.
And so they listed some of the early some of
the first junk food in the United States, and the
(12:23):
first snaky junk food they credit as being cracker Jack's um,
introduced at the World's Fair in Ee by the brothers
Frederick and Louis or Lewis uh Rukheim m hm. And
you know, cracker Jacks is delicious, is still around today, right,
And and the thing with cracker Jacks is, again, there
(12:45):
was recipes like that in existence prior to cracker Jack's, Right,
same with Caramel's name with chocolate. People made this stuff.
But what the Rockheim brothers did was they took it.
They figured out a way to produce it on a
larger scale, sell it, and and this is one of
the hallmarks of junk food. They figured out a way
to market it effectively. That little prize, that's exactly right.
(13:08):
That basically established the rule book for junk food from
then till now. Yeah, the Tutsi roll is another good example.
In five Um, there was candy before that, but this
is the first one to be individually wrapped. You know,
that didn't come in a packet of six or eight.
So you could take a penny, a little shiny copper penny,
(13:31):
and you could get a Tutsi roll and you didn't
have to like pick the hair off of it first
because it was wrapped individually. That's right. Uh. I like
this story. UM. An eleven year old named Frank Epperson
UM left on a cold night in San Francisco, left
his powdered soda drink with a stirring stick in the cup.
Came out the next day and it was frozen, and
(13:53):
he ate it. He said, this is amazing. I'm gonna
wait twenty years and then patting this. Yeah, and not
quite twenty years. About eighteen years later, he basically applied
for a patent and called them, uh, epsicles because everybody's
like and this. Children said, hey, pop, why don't you
call him popsicles? And so the popsicle was born. Yeah,
(14:16):
and his children never saw a penny of that money
another junk food, did they not? I'm just okay, what
about do you know much about potato chips? Uh? Now,
So we could sit here for hours and hours and
do this, because every junk food has a great origin story.
There's a there's a book that did this for est.
It's called The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food,
(14:37):
and it's on Academia dot E d U, which is
basically apparently they upload books onto this thing and you
can read them. Yeah. So, um, potato chips. The legend
goes that it was invented in the eighteen fifties in Saratoga,
New York by a guy, a chef named George Crew
I believe, and um, that's not true. They've been around
(15:00):
for at least thirty years before that, but that's the
popular story. And Um, around the eighteen fifties, eighteen seventies
eighteen eighties, people started manufacturing him on mass, but they
were delivered in barrels, and then the customers would come
and be like, I brought my own brown paper bag,
shovel some potato chips into this, and I'll go home
(15:23):
and warm them up, and they'll be stale. And so
they part of the mass commercialization of this junk food
was to figure out how to package it and preserve
it so that they didn't go stale and people didn't
have to bring their own bag from home to go
buy potato chips. They could just buy the bag and
take it home. And it took until the nineteen thirties
to figure that out. How long was that the eighties
(15:45):
and really started to sell them. It took like fifty
years to get him package correctly. Interesting uh, soda soda drinks,
soft drink, soda, pop pop coke. Depending on where you're from,
you're gonna call it something different. Uh. That goes back
to seventeenth century Europe when they had carbonated water mixed
with lemon juice and honey and um. Many years later,
(16:08):
in nineteen seventy six, seven eleven introduced the world to
the Big Gulp, which was thirty two ounces of um
of nasty stuff, and then they said, how about doubling
down on that, and they created the double Big Gulp,
And then Mayor Bloomberg was like, no, no, I think
(16:31):
I got rid of those, didn't they think they tried to? Yeah,
they definitely tried to. I don't know if I went
through or not. In New York City, Yeah, Emily still
drinks the diet Coke Big Gulp every day, and I'm
just like, you just can't do that to yourself. Yeah,
there's there's got to be something really really wrong with it.
There has to be. This is too too much science,
(16:52):
like in one concentrated form, you know. Yeah, but what's
funny is Coke, PETSI Hires, roop Here dr Upper. They
all started out as a lick sers and tonics that
were sold at the pharmacy, like that's where you got
those originally, and then they became one of the most ubiquitous,
unhealthy drinks on the planet. Alright, So we talked a
(17:14):
lot about we could, like you said, we could go
on all day talking about the history of different junks.
Would you got one more? I got one more? The
world's first combination candy bar. There were chocolate bar bars
before the first candy bar, Clark Bar really, which is uh,
it's like a butterfinger but better is it? Because it
was first and it's a Clark You got any more?
(17:38):
I've got more, but I'll stop. Pop tarts used to
be called the fruit scone. They used to be called
ep tarts and oh, I've got this is this is
very important, actually chucking all right, this is possibly the
mind blower the podcast. And this is a mind blowing
episode so far. Oreos was the knockoff, Hydros was the original.
(18:00):
Away Why how did they get market share? Oreo? Yeah?
Just by tasting way way better, I guess. Interesting, yea,
So Hidrocks is like made fun of it, like I
got hide Drocks when I was a kid because they're
a little cheaper, I think, you know, But they were
the original ones in hershey or Oreos was the rival,
the competitor knockoff of hide Rocks. I wish I would
(18:21):
have done that, although I'm not sure it would have
worked in elementary school if people like you can't afford
Oreos and like this was the original. It's disgusting, but
it's the It came first, and I can't even get
the cookie apart without it breaking like the oreo. Poor kid.
All right, so after this break, we're gonna come back
and talk a little bit about the science of junk food.
(18:58):
Google Cluster first. Munition Candy pop Tarts are the knockoff.
They were originally created to overcome the rival country Square Stop.
I love how you said it quieter, like maybe Chuck
won't notice sitting right across from me, just between you
and listening. Although the bubble gum one was pretty cool.
(19:19):
The guy, yeah, he invented gun before bubble gum was
just chewing gum. Double bubble is what he came up with, right, Uh,
it was a double bubble, was the first one, I think.
So it was in that one New York Times article. Yes,
it was double bubble. And he said that he died
with a smile on his face because he brought so
much joy to children all over the world. You didn't
(19:39):
care about their gentle habits. Alright, So the science of
junk food, Um, it's actually pretty interesting because it's not
just there's nothing willy nilly about it. These are very
there's a lot of money at steak, so companies throw
a lot of dough into food laboratories, um, finding what
(20:01):
they refer to as that sweet spot or the bliss point. Yeah,
the bliss point. Um. Again, the article is really great
for New York Times. That was a different one. That
one is called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.
It's very long, um, but that bliss point or the
sweet spot is what they're after. And what you're really
(20:22):
talking about is mouth feel, which we've talked about in
Nothing Taste or Know something else more recently than that.
I think I had to do with bars. Remember gum
Arabic gave a different mouth feel, um to than just
regular simple syrup. Yeah, that's right, mouth feel. So Cheetos
is one of the more famous junk foods of all
time because it's sort of a wonder of science in
(20:45):
that um it praise upon something called vanishing caloric density,
which basically means you put a cheeto or a cheese
puff or a cheese poodle in your mouth and you're
gonna chew it a couple of times and it's just
gonna sort of dis aolve and your brain doesn't really
register that it's even eating calories. That is why you
(21:06):
eat an entire bag of Cheetos because we've evolved to
see with our tongues, or to measure with our tongues. Um,
roughly the caloric density of a food. Yeah, because when
took Tucks running around, they needed to eat efficiently, which
means eating as many calories as they could with his
little stuff going in their mouth as possible. Exactly right. So, um,
(21:29):
the tongue would learn to detect fat. Fat is extremely
dense calorically, So after you eat a certain amount of fat,
you get kind of this nasty feel in your mouth.
Your mouth feel it's kind of greasy, right, and you
suddenly realize that you can't eat another bite of this
fatty slab of pork fat. You know, yeah, it is good,
(21:52):
but imagine eating a big toilet seat size slab over
you would not write. You get sick from it, and
the reason why is your brain becomes satiated. So what
these food scientists figured out is that they if they
can make something basically melt like a cheeto, it tricks
your tongue into missing the fact that it's a really
(22:15):
fatty food, and like you said, you can eat a
whole bag of it thanks to that vanishing caloric density. Well,
another thing they do is like, let's say you're eating
a cheeseburger from a fast food chain and that has
that same fatty feel, but they realize if you serve
the the soda with that, it balances things out to
(22:37):
where you don't have that greasy mouth feel any longer exactly.
So that's I mean, that's one reason why they sell
SODA's fast food chains. That's what a value meal comes from.
It's not just like, yeah, we want to make we
want to make sure you get your money's worth. No,
they want to make sure that you're gonna say I
could use another cheeseburger. I'm back, I want another cheeseburger please,
(22:59):
And I say, certainly, we will happily sell you one
of those. See, I don't drink soda, So when I
eat fast food, what do you drink water? Huh? Is
that strange? Yeah? Like what else would I drink? Off?
Notn soda? Well that's that's it. Oh yeah, that's your choice,
soda or nothing. You're not even allowed to drink water.
(23:21):
You have to sit there and eat it dry well.
Although my sister in law drinks milk with most meals.
I grew up like that. Like milk and pizza even, Yeah,
milk and everything. Yeah, not me. I've got a really
disgusting milk and broccoli story that I'm not going to tell,
but it is rody. Come on, you really want to
(23:43):
hear it? Okay? Well, then warning for those of you
with a weak stomach, you really don't want to hear this.
Or if you're I would say eating broccoli or drinking
milk anytime soon, probably avoid it. Okay. So um, I
hate broccoli, but I used to really hate broccoli. And
when I was a kid, like you just couldn't leave
the table until you were done eating your vegetables, and
(24:05):
we drank milk with every every meal. So I would
I would eat the broccoli where I would take a
bite and it would touch my tongue for a mill
a second, and I'd wash it down with like half
a thing of milk. Right, So you're basically swallowing broccoli, hoole, Right,
but I'm taking like a half a cup of milk
for each swallow. So I kept having to drink more
and more milk, I think. Well, one night, my mom
(24:28):
was working a shift at the er and my dad
was in charge of feeding me dinner. And um, I'd
gotten about halfway through my broccoli and then drank god
knows how much milk with it. When I took one
more bite, and all of it just came right back
up on my plate and without looking my dad was
like looking up at the ceiling while he grabbed my plate.
(24:48):
I was like, okay, I think that's enough for you,
and like cleared the plate, and I thought I won.
So your dad cleared a plate of vomited up food
without knowing it, No, without like purposely not looking at Oh, okay,
He's like, okay, that's enough. Well, that was nice of him.
It was I didn't have to finish my brother. I
thought he was gonna say, like, eat it again, right,
he rubbed my face in it. My mom used to
(25:10):
said the old oven timer, remember that trick. Oh, we
didn't have time. It was just you're not getting up.
It doesn't matter what time it is. You can't get
up and go get bed or watch TV or anything.
We had. Like he got ten minutes to finish those
screen beans, and I did the old drink. I was like,
I'm drawing just corner the bathroom, right. It didn't work. Now,
(25:31):
I thought it was smart all right, So drunk food
is not healthy for you. Oh yeah, we know that, Um,
the American Civil War. Here are things that can happen
if you eat too much junk food. You're going to
get obese, which means you're gonna have an increased risk
of heart disease. You may get type two diabetes, and
(25:52):
like you said, with the mental side, you may become depressed.
Because addiction. UM, it has all the characteristics of just
like a drug addiction and alcoho all addiction. You bene
on it, you withdraw from it, you um get an
increased tolerance from it. And UM, I I have the
impression that they have figured out like that there really
(26:14):
is a certain amount of addiction you can you can
get from eating junk food, and that it's basically getting
that pop, that that blood sugar high rush that you're
dropped off from very quickly and then having to chase
after it again, chasing, chasing the dragon or something like that.
So I guess that's what it's called. UM. And so
(26:36):
you can display them the signs of addiction from junk
food as well. UM. Much more closely linked is the
connection between junk food and type two diabetes. Yeah, Americans
UM consume about twenty two teaspoons of sugar a day
(26:57):
on average. UM. A lot of this stuff comes from
high pric doose, corn sert um, candy, junk food, soft drinks,
and UM. How that works, as your body is going
to break that down, uh, break down those carbohydrates, and
your blood sugar is gonna spike. UM. Which you know,
a single episode of your blood sugar spiking isn't the
(27:18):
biggest deal in the world. But when you repeatedly do
that to your pancreas, UM, it's gonna basically tire out
and wear out those insulin producing cells and trigger type
two diabetes. Right. Because when you when you have glucose
in your blood, that's a good thing because that provides
(27:38):
energy to yourself and insulin comes along and helps open
up your cells to allow it to absorb the glucose
and get it out of your blood stream. Right. But
after being exposed to this time and time again, your
cells stop absorbing glucose as well, so you have to
produce more and more insulin, and eventually, like you were saying,
those cells tire out, your pancreas can't produce enough insulin,
(28:00):
and so you always have an elevated level of glucose
in your blood streak. That's bad. That leads to nerve
damage and blood vessel damage which is associated with type
two diabetes, and everything from heart disease to foot amputations
can result. Because, like say, with your foot, this always
fascinated me. I was like, why would diabetes lead to
(28:20):
your foot getting amputated? I'll tell you why. So, remember,
glucose levels leading to nerve damage supposedly concentrates in the
foot and you lose feeling in your foot. So even
just like stubbing your toe badly can lead to an
infection that you don't notice because you're not feeling the pain.
And all of a sudden you have this uh infection
(28:43):
that's not being fought off properly because the blood circulation
to your foot is diminished. And next thing you know,
you have gang green and your foot has to be
amputated because of type two diabetes. Yeah, and isn't um
I didn't look this up. But the way I understand
it is you can reverse the head towards type two
diabetes until you have type two diabetes, and then you've
(29:04):
got it. That's what I think, That's what I thought
to you, like, you can't undo it once it's take
and hold right. What you what you go through first
is called insulin resistance metabolic syndrome or pre diabetes, and
you can catch that. You just need to go in
for a physical like once a year or something like that,
and you'll be able to catch whether or not you
have pre diabetes, and then you take certain measures to
(29:28):
not get type two diabetes. But yeah, I think once
you have type two diabetes, you got it for life. Um.
One other thing I want to say, uh, and it's
not just about the health aspects of it, but there's
this really great documentary narrated by Katie Curic called fed
Up I think everybody should see and it's about this
really good, really well done documentary. Yeah. There there's a
(29:51):
lot of great food documentaries out right now, Um that
really go into what the food industry has become these days.
Very eye opening stuff. Yeah. Have you seen Supersize Me? Yeah,
you know he's under fire for basically like a lot
of people have tried to replicate his results and if
no one's been able to do it. Huh, it was
(30:12):
interesting at the time. Have you seen super High Me? Uh? Yes, Benson, Yeah,
it was funny. That was For those who don't know,
Doug Benson is a comedian who was famous for smoking
tons of weed. And he's got a documentary called Super
High Me Yeah, in which I believe he smoked pot
(30:35):
every day, all day for thirty days and then died
and took a bunch of tests like brain tests and
physicals and things like that, and then did not smoke
at all, and then compared the two. How did it
turn out? That was interesting? Some results were as you'd expect,
in some surprise to see that he's a funny guy
that I like him. Um, all right, so we'll take
(30:58):
a break here and we come back. We're gonna to
talk a little bit more about this really cool article,
the Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. All Right, you
(31:22):
sent me this article that we reference, the Extraordinary Science
of Addictive Junk Food, and it's really interesting. UM by
Michael Moss. Right was that his name pretty sure? As
in the New York Times in two thousand twelve, or yeah,
And he basically details, Uh, at first, a meeting in
n of the heads of some of the largest food
(31:43):
companies in the world getting together, um to talk about
the fact that all these doctors are staying we're making
junk people are getting no beasts, and um this this
chemist basically thought, I'm going to talk these people into
sort of reverse seeing some of their their practices the
(32:04):
name of good health, and was disappointed to find that
they all kind of dug in and we're like no, Like,
we're gonna make this stuff and people want it. They
want it, and we're not going to try and make
a healthier snicker bar that doesn't sell because the name
of the game is selling food. I think the way
nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads. Yeah, the
(32:26):
thing is is a lot of people controvert that point
and say, you guys kind of use science to hijack
our evolutionary processes and make it so that it's really,
really difficult to refuse this food, right, like the cheetos
that melt in your mouth and your brain doesn't realize
it's eating all these calories. Uh, so you end up
(32:47):
eating tons of cheetos. Um one of the most interesting
stories in here, I thought, And he tells a bunch
of sort of histories of some of these junk foods,
but um, lunchables was super interesting to me and I
want to say nefarious almost, you know when you look
at how it came about. Um, But basically what they
(33:11):
did a lot of research into uh motherhood and found
that the biggest challenge was time and moms don't have time.
And I say, mom's parents, Well this is so it
was mom's Yeah that's true. Um, parents and moms don't
have time to get to get a good meal into
(33:34):
their child. So we're also having a bologney crisis, right.
Oscar Meyer was like, nobody's eating all of loaf any longer.
We're in a lot of trouble. So what are we
gonna do? Yeah, these things came together to create the Lunchable,
which was a new convenient way to package food in
a tray. But it was the same stuff. Yeah, sell
(33:55):
that ballogne. Yeah again, it's all marketing and packaging. So
that Bologny. They wanted to put bread in there, but
of course bread, you can't make bread lass for two months. Um,
So they threw some crackers in there. Uh, they wanted
cheese in there because what goes better with bologna and
crackers cheese? And then I think Oscar Meyer bought Kraft,
(34:16):
so they just started using craft cheese, and both of them.
By the way, we're owned by Philip Morris, a cigarette
manufacturer who definitely has your health at heart. Yeah. Uh.
They did experiment with some different cheeses and they found
that like, real cheese was no good. Uh. And the
best cheapest cheese that lasted the longest was not even cheese.
It was cheese food, which I think is awesome that
(34:37):
it's in its own category cheese food, cheese food. Yeah,
but hats off to him for trying real cheddar first. Yeah,
I guess. So it's like the potato chips and a barrel.
Though they go stale, you can't you can't sell it. Yeah.
This article points out that it takes several months for
something from to go from the factory to the grocery
(34:57):
store shelf. Yeah. So wait, that's the part I didn't get.
The ham in those things is good for several months. Yes, Oh,
it's probably good for several years. Preservatives the same thing
that the poison squad was like testing against. Remember in
the FDA episode. These are the things that didn't make
them sick. That's what preserves our food. Now, it's not
(35:19):
necessarily good for you, but it won't make you sick
immediately and Chuck, There's one other thing I want to say. Um,
I've seen this a couple of places. Apparently the apple
that you buy at the store has been off the
tree for an average of fourteen months. Really, yes, and
(35:40):
it's just the preservatives, Like, I have no idea how
they do it. Fourteen months is the average from tree
to shelf for an apple? An apple? That's what eve.
I don't know. Interesting, I don't know, but I have
(36:01):
seen it a couple of places, and I would like
to know if anyone out there knows that that is
incontrovertibly untrue, or if it is true, how that's possible.
I would love to know, all right, the big I'm
sure someone knows, because you make an excellent point, like
why would then it's spoil very quickly in your house
unless it's kept under certain conditions until it gets to
(36:24):
your house, and then it's like, well die because you
bought me. Uh So back the lunchables, the sales were
going gangbusters, but they were still losing money on it
because it was just an expensive product to package those
little trays and everything costs money. Um, and then they
(36:44):
just started to run wild with adding things to make
a two increased sales. They started adding desserts to it.
They started adding sugary drinks to them, um Pret's son
Yeah Kool Late Capris son um. And then they started marketing.
They tried things like carrots, but they didn't sell well,
so they scrapped it. Uh. And then they started realizing
(37:06):
that we should market to children and not moms anymore,
because what they figured out was that it was about
the kids having control, because the kids would go and
throw out the carrots and just eat the meat and cheese,
let's say, in the loresa cup that went in there. Uh.
And so they started marketing to children with commercials like
(37:26):
all day you gotta do what they say, but lunchtime
is all yours. And little kids on Saturday mornings are like,
lunchtime is all mine with lunchables and they wanted it,
so they would go to the store and scream at
the top of their lungs until they got it. The
other interesting thing was which which also one other thing
I guarantee you, and I haven't verified this, but I
(37:46):
guarantee you that if you go to the store and
you find lunchables, they're at a child's eye level. Oh,
I'm sure they are. That's where they're placed, not mom
I level, child eye level. Yeah. I think they're on
the um the horizontal part of the meat section. Yes,
like not built vertically up on a shelf as if
they're down even below the kid where they can even
(38:07):
grab it, yeah and run out of the store with me. Um.
The other interesting thing I think it was in this
article when they talked about what's happened to yogurt over
the years, was that in here we're basically they hijacked
something that should be good for you, and now you
get like twice the amount of sugar your body needs
and a serving of yogurt these days like heath bar sprinkles. Yeah. Yeah,
(38:30):
and now let's put it. Let's put it in its
squeezy tube for kids. Can call it yogurt, call it yogurt. Yeah. Um.
This article was really great. I mean, this guy really
laid it out. Um, just the ideas behind it, the
thinking behind it, the science behind It's a really long article.
It's really really worth reading. Um. One of the other
things he goes into is that there's this um uh,
(38:53):
this food scientist who's kind of like a legend. I
think his last name is Moscow Wits. Yeah. Um, he's
just a legend in this field. And he figured out
very early on that the optimizer. Yeah, he figured out
that UMP not only does your tongue like detect fat
and say, okay, you've had enough fat, stop eating this,
(39:13):
that that has to be tricked. It does the same
thing with flavor too. So um, if there's a really
overt and obvious flavor that might taste delicious, you get
sick of it faster. So what this guy figured out
what food scientists now do is they'll take flavors and
combine other flavors so one isn't dominant, so that there's
(39:35):
no real flavor for the tongue to be like, I'm
sick of it. So doritos are a really good example,
Like nacho dorritos is its own flavor. It's not just garlic,
it's not just cheesy. It's this thing that they've put
together that tricks your tongue into never being satiated, which
is how you can down a whole bag of doritos. Yeah,
it was so interesting, and so much research goes into this.
(39:57):
When they start talking about the amount of consue, more
study they did and and uh, like thousands and thousands
of hours of people tasting things, uh and taking notes
on what they're tasting, and basically creating a mathematical formula
for how to create the perfect thing that you won't
want to stop eating, and not just for people for
(40:20):
this age group or this age group of this ethnicity
or whatever. Like, it's really down to science all of
this just to come up with cherry vanilla dr pepper. Yeah. Uh.
And the other thing too was remember how I railed
about all the doritos now the different flavors, which I
have no problem with that. Well, I just thought it
was interesting and that they basically food technicians at a
(40:42):
certain point stopped worrying about new products and said, the
line extension is where it's at. So instead of uh,
one type of dorito, will offer you like twenty five
different types rather than one type of dorito and like
an entirely new product, because apparently one of the hardest
things in the world to do is to get people
(41:03):
to buy a new product. Whereas if you already have
the branding associated with it, the emotional attachment, people know
it's tasty, they'll try a different version and offshoot of it,
but not necessarily a whole new product that could be
superior in every way. Uh. And they spend as much
as thirty million dollars a year on some of these products,
(41:23):
not the company, but like on a specific food product,
including things like machinery forty dollar machine that simulated a
chewing mouth to test the perfect breakpoint of a potato chip. Yeah,
which is four pounds per square inch. I think have
four pounds of pressure per square inch. And so they're
not only spending money on research on advertising as well
(41:45):
as how stuff works. Article pointed out that um, in
two thowelve, just McDonald's spent two points seven times as
much money on advertising as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water,
and milk producers can buy. Yeah, I believe that totally.
You don't see a lot of broccoli commercials. They're disgusting.
(42:08):
All right, we'll finish with something interesting that you sent
about the junk food diet. I think I've heard of
this before, um, where someone will undertake a diet of
not only junk food, but a lot of junk food. Oh,
this guy's a nutritionist, like a nutrition scientist from Kansas State.
Go some sort of cat Yeah, like a large cat
(42:34):
case state. Yeah, it's some sort of big cat there.
You all right, go big cats? Uh. Yeah. He went
on a ten week junk food diet, um chocolate covered snacks,
cream filled cakes, sugary cereals, cookies, chips. He did eat
a protein shake every day, and some vitamins and supplements
and some veggies here and there too, And he lost
(42:56):
a lot of weight doing it because he calories a day,
which is a calorie reduced diet. But technically, as far
as macronutrients goes uh, it was a balanced diet, balance
between carbs, proteins, and fats. And he lost a bunch
of weight. He lost a bunch of weight. He lost
his b m I went down, his total body fat
(43:19):
was reduced, his cholesterol was reduced, the bad cholesterol went down,
the good cholesterol went up. And that nuts eating junk
food on a junk food diet. Like I can see
losing weight like calories or calories, And there's a big
debate about that, but I think ultimately that's what this
thing shows. And if you reduce calories, it doesn't matter
where your calories are coming from, you're going to lose weight.
(43:41):
But to have your bad cholestero all go down and
you're good. Cluster all go up. Was really surprising to me. Yeah,
and I think the main thing I took away though,
this is a ten week diet and what happens over
a ten year period, Well that yeah, who knows. That
was a great question, pretty interesting though, very interesting stuff.
Mark stab, I believe Mark Hobb of K State go
(44:05):
big cats man. Sorry, K State. That was Lane Chuck.
That was lame. Uh. If you want to know more
about junk food, you should type those words in the
search part how stuff works dot com and check out,
um the New York Times articles. There's some good ones
on there. Check out the Encyclopedia Junk Food and Fast Food.
(44:25):
Actually go to the podcast page for this episode, and
it's got all that stuff. Uh. And I guess it's
time for listening there. Uh. Yeah. By the way, I
just looked it up. I don't normally do that. But
it's wildcats, so we were right. Bam, Willie the wildcat
is the actual man. We said big cats, and it's
the wildcat. Wildcats are not super big, but they can
(44:45):
be yeah, like allions. Technically a wildcat. Oh, I guess
I just think of like bobcats and things in mountain
lines when I think the wildcats, but the line would
be a wildcat right, Sure, they're huge, huge, All right,
I'm gonna call this aborigines. Um. Remember when the Male
Puberty episode we talked about, Um, the Aborigines had some
(45:07):
pretty brutal puberty rights that they would put boys through. Um,
we were taking a task a little bit in a
nice way. Um, guys, want to give you some feedback
about the term in the Australian context. Uh, this is
quite an outdated term to say aborigines. Some people still
identify with it, but it's generally accepted to say Indigenous
Australians are Aboriginal Australians. Uh. There are hundreds of Aboriginal
(45:31):
nations around Australia, each with their own traditions and knowledge.
Within these nations our various clan and family groups, and
within those are multiple types of kinship relationships. It gets
really complicated. So that puberty ritual you mentioned would likely
have only been practiced by some people. Others would have
had their own traditions. So in other words, we shouldn't
have just said, like, the Aborigines do this, because it
(45:54):
might have been like one small part of a tribe
or something very very good point. Yeah, so that is
from Krista Uh, I assume in Australia. Can you say
it like in Australian. Yeah, that's pretty good, all right
Australian for Krista. Um if you want to take us
to task in a nice way or otherwise, but we
always prefer it a nice way. Um, we'd love to
(46:16):
hear from you. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
(46:38):
how Stuff Works dot com
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